After seeing what’s possible with an app management platform a.k.a., the App Store, on the iPhone, suddenly the whole Mac way of self managing your apps seems a little obsolete. You have to find em, install them, update them. Wouldn’t it be so easy just to click a button and have the app launch in your Dock? While there’s still no such thing as the Mac App Store, third party developers have made some headway in smoothening out the workflow. You can discover apps using Bodega. Install them using Hazel or Dropzone. And update them using a bunch of update trackers, one of them being MacUpdate.
With its latest 5.0 release, MacUpdate wants to rekindle interest in the desktop app updating service it has offered for a while now. The new app “rewritten from the ground up” is much better to look at, and feels more at home on the Snow Leopard desktop. I don’t remember my experiences with the previous versions, but the new one claims smarter scanning, better workflow, and cheaper at $20/year for 5 Macs. You can of course, sign up for a ten day trial of the service.
So I put it through the test. I’ve got about 150 apps installed on my Mac, and MacUpdate went through them within 5 minutes of launch. An easy to understand list of what’s outdated, along with the version number changes is brought up. The list included widgets, screen savers, and preference panes along with the app in the Applications folder. Click on the app to see the release notes in the HUD, and click “Download + Install” to get the app updated. MU desktop does all the work behind the scenes, and presents you with an updated app. Seamless, effortless, painless. There’s even an “Update All” button if you’re up for mass updating.
MacUpdate does offer app discovery as well. Under the “Mac Community” section in the sidebar, you can access MUpromo apps, latest releases, hot picks, and popular. The lists aren’t extensive, are incomplete, but for what it’s worth, installing new apps from there is just as easy and updating apps. Maybe MacUpdate could also add a search and effectively launch a 30,000 app strong “Mac App Store” of its own.
All this is fine while the app is free, but pay $20/year for keeping your apps up to date? Almost every Mac app comes with some sort of built-in update checker—the Sparkle framework usually—and it pings the update server every time the app is launched. So unless you’re not using the app in question, it’s going to be updated. The only reason the MU desktop app found a bunch of apps on my Mac that were up for updating only because I don’t usually update my apps unnecessarily. I have a slow internet connection, and it’s better used to download podcasts instead of pulling unnecessary point updates.
Is this not good enough?
This brings me to other apps that offer updating. Bodega also has its own update checker, and although their 700 app strong database isn’t as extensive as MacUpdate’s. There’s even a simple Dashboard widget that checks the Apple software directory, MU, as well as VersionTracker. Even VersionTracker has its own app/service. So far MacUpdate is the best of the lot, with an extensive database, clean user interface, and smooth workflow. Bodega of course is meant more for discovery than for updating, so it’s apples and oranges here.
What’s my take? Unless you’re a clean freak, and need to have every app up-to-date on launch, having one of these apps or services isn’t exactly game changing. While $20/year isn’t all that much, it’s still an unnecessary expense. Moreover, you need to launch the MacUpdate app to carry out this updating in any case. But that’s only my limited point of view. Anyone using one of these regularly?
